


The Edge of the Sea

by weeesi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, Grief/Mourning, Jealous John, John is Not Out, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV John Watson, Pining John, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-03-14 08:12:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13585959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weeesi/pseuds/weeesi
Summary: Sherlock is dead.The next week passes in a blur.Mycroft invites John not to come to the funeral if he’d like, except for the fact that Mrs Hudson needs an escort and he’d really rather get through it than wonder forever what it would have been. He goes, and sits, and contains, and pours a cup of scalding-hot coffee down his throat which he hopes will burn down the tumble of nerves and anger and the type of sick-sadness he can’t examine too closely and the other feelings he won’t even acknowledge. He misses not missing him all the same.John spends the next two years alone. Sherlock doesn't.





	1. I will become what I deserve

**Author's Note:**

> season3hiatus sent me this prompt:
> 
> _"Could you do some pining jealous John? Like Victor Trevor comes back to London, John never knew about him but is practically dying inside now that Victor and Sherlock are pals again..."_
> 
> My brain spun this off into an angsty direction, naturally. At the moment there are between 12-15 chapters planned. 
> 
> The title of the fic comes from the poem _Breakage_ by Mary Oliver and the chapter titles come from songs I've listened to whilst writing. May do a playlist with 'em all eventually. Rated explicit for eventual obvious reasons.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two days pass before John realises he hasn’t changed his shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [TW: there is a tiny, brief moment of suicidal ideation in the second vignette and a description of a panic attack in the eleventh]

**Breakage**

By Mary Oliver

_I go down to the edge of the sea._

_How everything shines in the morning light!_

_The cusp of the whelk,_

_the broken cupboard of the clam,_

_the opened, blue mussels,_

_moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—_

_and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,_

_dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone._

_It's like a schoolhouse_

_of little words,_

_thousands of words._

_First you figure out what each one means by itself,_

_the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop_

_full of moonlight._

 

_Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story._

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

His grief blooms in colours. 

Shades of blue or black. 

Sometimes green. 

Never gold. 

 

Sherlock is dead.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Two days pass before John realises he hasn’t changed his shirt. 

He’s sat in his chair in their dark flat, facing Sherlock’s ghost and questioning his sanity, and all at once it hits him that he’s wearing the same shirt he put on that first morning. Before the night before. He must reek. He can’t muster the energy to check.

Sherlock fell.

It was real, wasn’t it?

Sherlock on the pavement with an open, empty, doll-eyed stare, his eyes the colour of the sky just before sunrise. John had felt the absence of a pulse with his own fingers. A blank nothing where blood ran in and through, and now out.

John hadn’t thought about joining him except for once, when he remembered how easy it would’ve been not long ago and then how difficult it became.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

The next week passes in a blur. 

Mycroft invites him not to come to the funeral if he’d like, except for the fact that Mrs Hudson needs an escort and he’d really rather get through it than wonder forever what it would have been. He goes, and sits, and _contains_ , and pours a cup of scalding-hot coffee down his throat which he hopes will burn down the tumble of nerves and anger and the type of sick-sadness he can’t examine too closely and the other feelings he won’t even acknowledge, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t. He misses not missing him all the same.

He marches away and back into hiding. He’s lying to himself, he knows, but it’s better not to look at the truth of what happened: Sherlock had needed him and he’d as good as shoved him off the roof himself. Called his beating heart a machine.

Couldn’t he have been? Would’ve made things easier.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

John thinks to stay in Baker Street at first. 

He destroys the flat and Sherlock’s room with it in a rage the ninth night and that is that. Tears apart drawers, throws papers around in piles, tosses chemistry equipment off the tables. Can’t cry, _christ_ , he can’t cry, what’s wrong with him? Remorseful, he climbs full-bodied into Sherlock’s wardrobe and sits on the floor with the door closed, extremely careful not to let any silky shirts or suit jackets touch his skin or brush against his clothing for consideration of preservation of their scent.

A lost sock crumpled into the corner is what does it eventually.

The next morning he topples out stiff and ruined, his tear-stained cheeks a display for Mrs Hudson more to the point than he could ever explain.

He never goes back.

That night he goes to a bar furthest away from Baker Street as he can manage and pulls a man who looks the most like Sherlock he can find. No true resemblance really, but he’s tall and has dark hair, and that’s good enough for John. He buys him a drink and sucks him off in the gents in a corner cubicle that’s out of loo paper. The man asks for his number and John makes one up. The lie comes easily when he pulls the phone out of his pocket to check that the message went though.

He washes out his mouth with one of Sherlock’s cigarettes.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

A month goes by, or two, and John’s losing track of things like when exactly he’s supposed to be working at the shite surgery or the upper limit of how many portions of alcohol one is allowed to consume on a weeknight or what is and isn’t appropriate to say to strangers or how many times is too many times to punch someone in the face or fuck them on an unfamiliar sofa after getting drunk again, and again, and again, and again. 

You’re meant to miss your friends.

Usually friends don’t kill themselves in front of you.

God, if he’d just…when Sherlock was alive.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Haunting the corner round Mycroft’s club isn’t the way he’d planned on spending an evening but he can’t help himself, he’s pissed off his head and too twisted up and bitter and angry, he’s so blindingly _angry_ that Mycroft couldn’t stop this, didn’t do anything, he sold out his own brother, the poncy arsehole _bastard_ , just stepped aside whilst Sherlock dealt with this all on his own, and John didn’t know any better, he tried to help, tried to figure out what was going on, but Mycroft _knew_ , he had to have known what Sherlock would do, the _fucking bastard_ , and the punch lands exactly where he’s meant it to, right on the corner of Mycroft’s jaw.

John doesn’t even run.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

 _You need help_ , Harry tells him after she bails him and they walk together toward his bus stop before sharing an awkward goodbye. She half-hugs his good shoulder and adjusts the bag slung over her own. She’s tired and sober, and trying her best to be a good sister. _You’re going down a bad road._

He bristles, abruptly thankless. _Takes one to know one,_ he says.

The worst part is, she doesn’t say anything _._ She just walks away.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

A routine forms. Many of his days are spent waiting. For what exactly, he has no idea, but he can’t stop himself from plummeting deeper and deeper into his head, slumping into a moss-covered, glacially-paced, shadow of a life.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Bone-deep grief eats him for months, cuts him all the way through, neatly slices him for presentation on the street to friends and colleagues and strangers alike, serves up answers to the ready questions of “how are you doing” and “is it getting better” and “goodness has it been that long” and John lets the questions come and the answers come and every time it is a pebble piled atop a pebble in his chest. He’s an eaten-out shell filled up with pebbles.

Then one morning, when he wakes up in a new place in the same city, it’s different. Instead of the sharp jagged bite, a dull ache settles somewhere between his kidneys. He lets it grow untamed like a tumour.

A forgotten garden.

Sherlock is mostly dirt, after all.

…Except…that’s wrong, isn’t it. That’s something stupid and ill-informed that someone would say, and Sherlock would correct them by spewing out the exact qualities a body would have after spending the better part of a year in a wooden box in the wet, dark ground.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

The winter passes and John barely notices. By this time he’s had a few flings that last a matter of weeks, had his stomach pumped to prevent alcohol poisoning after one particularly long bender, lost his job and miraculously found another, ignored Mycroft’s calls fourteen times, hasn’t called Mrs Hudson once, and come to terms with the fact that he’ll never come to terms with this.

Ella tells him that he should talk about it.

Ella tells him that he should tell her what he would have told Sherlock.

John tells her there are easier ways to destroy yourself.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

On the first anniversary he thinks he should go to the cemetery, leave some flowers, say a few words. Something proper, something Sherlock would’ve hated. 

Instead John does something that Sherlock would’ve maybe hated less, and phones Lestrade out of nowhere to get a pint, except Lestrade can’t go, he falls all over himself apologising as he mumbles something about his kid, and so John walks the streets alone all night beside Sherlock’s ghost and gets a kebab for breakfast.

He feels better, he thinks. It might not be true but what does Ella say about telling yourself things. About willing things to settle. To be.

He can’t remember what 221B smells like. He can remember, of course, but can’t bring the precise scent to mind as readily as he could before. Casts about. Yes. Wet wool and laundry cleanser and secret cigarettes and styrofoam clamshell carriers with stale bits of takeaway still stuck to them and chemical compounds and bleach and that horrible floral spray Mrs Hudson aways was going on with and the posh shampoo Sherlock used, yes, that was it, the smell would linger in the corridor after he showered on cold wintry nights, the humid air in the flat clinging to the walls and John could smell it in the kitchen if he was putting the kettle on or if he was sat in his chair tucking into a paperback, yes that’s right the smell of Sherlock’s shampoo would curl around him like a blanket and all of a sudden John is having a panic attack there on the 57 bus, clammy shaking hands and breath and his chest is split open, his chest is bursting, he’s dying, he knows he’s going to pass out if he doesn’t breathe, but his lungs have given up working there on the 57 bus and an elderly woman with a wire push-trolley says “alright love?” and John slumps to the floor.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

If anyone could come back to life, it would be him.

 _John, you can’t think like that, that’s not right,_ people always respond, assuming he’s joking. Good god, what a morbid thought.

 _If anyone could come back_ , he says. _He could._

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

It’s the smallest things, really, out of the pile of what he ends up remembering.

Hearing Sherlock flush the toilet in the middle of the night.

The crease he’d leave in the sofa cushions after a long strop or a rare nap.

The Belstaff’s occasional home behind the door.

Handwritten notes scattered about the inside of the fridge — never, of course, on what actually needed a toxicity warning but rather condemnations of subpar condiments and reviews of John’s attempts at Italian cooking. The last one Sherlock’d stuck to a tub of passable cacio e pepe.

 _Not enough butter_ , the note had said.

It’s still in there.

 

 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

He finishes dressing after his shower and climbs on top of his tightly made bed, cracks open the book, and breaks the spine. It’s a gift from a well-meaning patient who’d followed John’s blog before Sherlock killed himself and knows about as much as John has allowed anyone he doesn’t know to know, and now he’s in a rare good mood so why not.

 _Facing your feelings is the first step to regaining your life after a loss_ , the first paragraph begins, _because leaving what’s happened unresolved will only make things worse after a time. You must fully acknowledge what your loved one meant to—_

The book makes a satisfying noise when it hits the floor.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

 _If your positions were reversed, would you have done the same?_ He imagines Ella asking this as he walks along the row of Victorian terraced houses on his way to their session. The sky over London refuses to burst, and John’s taken an early lunch to try to miss the impending rain but it’s likely he’ll get drenched one way or the other. _Would you have done the same? Would you have jumped?_

He tries to focus on feeling the cool air on his face, or hearing the birds chirping wildly in the park, or paying attention to the small and important contractions and expansions of his leg muscles as he walks. The shift of his weight in his hips. The flex and pull within his body. The sensations of the larger world around him. 

It’s hard, but he can. He can if he tries. 

He wiggles his toes inside his shoes. 

It starts to rain.

Ella doesn’t ask him any of this, of course, but he had wanted to be prepared.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Heavy bass thuds all the way through John’s body, which makes his heartbeat reverberate and  the back of his eyeballs hurt. People push around him. He’s probably twice as old as the oldest person in the room. He knows he’ll have a headache tomorrow, he’s well aware of the man angling to stick a hand down the front of his trousers, and he finds he doesn’t care much, because he just wants to be young again, when all of this didn’t matter in a different way than it doesn’t matter now. 

He needs to stop fucking about, stop doing…all of this.

Later, when he pushes his way out of the club’s doors and watches the sunrise with a crowd of strangers, only then does anyone else notice he could be their dad. Someone shouts a crude joke at a friend, something about cockblocking their flatmate, and people pair off into twos and then threes and fours and John goes home across London to the bedsit that he shares with the past.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

 _You seem sad_ , the woman wearing the pinstriped apron says. She stands behind the caff workbench as she hands John a paper cup. The heat soaks into his palm.

 _I’m not_ , he says. He’s stopped in to buy a tea before work and regrets it.

 _It’s alright, I can tell,_ she gentles him.

There’s nothing to say.

 _I’m a bit psychic,_ she says. She studies his eyes. _You lost your wife._

He wonders what his face does.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

On a drizzly May morning John climbs into an overpacked Tube carriage along with half of London. He concentrates very carefully on a Vodaphone advert and thinks about what he could have done to prevent Sherlock from hurling his body off the top of a building and shattering John’s life along with his own. 

Nothing. There was nothing he could’ve done. He has to believe that.

But.

 _I was so alone and I owe you so much,_ he’d said as he patted a lob of granite.

The man was a hurricane and John was an island.

Or was it the other way round?

But.

If he’d just spent a bit more time…what? Sherlock, the ill-behaved dickhead, had resisted every kind word, every gesture, every consideration John had ever offered him.

That’s not right.

He’d been soft, on occasion. Beneath that veneer of haughty confidence, there was a man who fussed over the lengths of his sleeves and played the violin when John’s pulse picked up after a dream. He’d brought John along, except when he didn’t, and could be wickedly funny, except when he wasn’t. He was deceptive and the most honest person John knew.

John trusted him with his life, but Sherlock hadn’t trusted John with his.

Why.

He knew him for real. He did.

But. _But._

Sherlock had lied at the end. In the last moments of his life he lied to John.

Why.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

On the second anniversary of Sherlock’s death, John takes himself on holiday.

Sussex Downs, why not, and he makes an extra long weekend of it because the woman he’d thought to take along turns out to have had a husband and there’s nothing John can do about cancelling the booking at such late notice. 

It’s quite beautiful, there, away from London’s ghosts, and he goes on long and rambly walks in the afternoons and talks aloud to himself. Ella’s been giving him exercises to practice and so he does his best. Therapy is turning out to be quite the tune-up, and he reasons that maybe the dull ache between his kidneys will eventually push its way out, although there’s a bit of him that wants it to stay, because it feels sort of like Sherlock has infested him and is living off him like a parasite on a host.

Fresh air makes one’s mind mend itself into illogical shapes.

He’s staying at a cottage with a view, and he’s brought _A Room with a View_ to read in the evenings, except he can’t care a toss for poor Lucy and he wrestles himself to sleep as instead the scene from the film replays in his mind on a loop, the scene where that man is killed in the square in Florence and George catches Lucy fainting, then says sternly, _now please, sit down, and don’t move until I come back_ and goes to the fountain to wash the blood off of his hands.

John hadn’t gotten any of Sherlock’s blood on him, not a drop.

He thinks of Julian Sands’ hair in the film, wonders if Sherlock’s would have been that long had it ever been straightened, wonders if Sherlock had ever pulled his fringe between finger and thumb to measure it, had to have done, wouldn’t he, and John remembers that even when sopping wet those black stands resisted order and twisted themselves into unruly rings.

That night John doesn’t dream for the first time in two years.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

A few mornings later he wipes his eyes and pours the rest of his whisky into the sink. Runs tepid water over the pooling amber until it becomes clear. 

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

They were just friends.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

John thinks he’s fine now, because he’s taken up boxing, and only loses one tooth that an on-call dentist friend is able to fix for him for a small favour, and he only fucks her a handful of times before she tells him that a friend of her’s might be looking for a similar favour. John declines.

John thinks he’s fine now, because he’s gone to see Ella every other week for six months straight and every time he sees her she asks him the same question and instead of dithering he’s been able to come out and say it, that he’ll never be able to say what he could’ve said and couldn’t possibly now. That takes guts, to be honest.

John thinks he’s fine now, because he’s kept his job for a year and thought about ringing Mrs Hudson on Sherlock’s birthday. He didn’t, but thinking and doing are two poles he’s able to string himself between and rest comfortably in the middle of for the first time in his life.

John thinks he’s fine now, because Sherlock has been dead for over two years and the tumour, the forgotten garden, the infestation, the parasite, the bone-deep grief has started blooming in a new colour.

Gold.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

The day that it happens happens to be the day that John’s due to meet a man called Thomas for the second time. Thomas has green eyes and a sharp wit and is cleverer than just about anyone John’s ever met, save for one person of course. He’s Belgian and works as a geophysicist at some posh research centre in west London and doesn’t know anything about what happened over two years ago and John thinks about asking him back to his bedsit on the other side of the city except for the fact that Thomas suggests they walk through Regent’s Park before a nightcap at the Landmark on Marylebone and John feels his hand cramp and his chest collapse in on itself and he leaves Thomas outside of Warren Street Station feigning a family emergency and then, somehow, god knows why, impossibly, inevitably, he ends up outside 221 Baker Street, flat B tucked unseen inside, the second storey flat that’s seventeen steps up from the street to the sitting room.

Two years away.

A lifetime of memories John has from less than that spent with Sherlock, up there in that dusty, cluttered, smelly, perfect home of a flat, spent with that inimitable man for less time than Sherlock’s spent in a box in the ground. 

It all rushes back in a flood. Pummelling up and down the steps at all hours, shouting abuse at inanimate objects and occasionally at animate ones, saying and not-saying and experimenting and writing and laughing and cooking and scoffing and that time, that singularly sacred time, falling asleep on the sofa together completely knackered after the conclusion of a long and eventful case. Sherlock’s bare ankles. The soft sound of his breathing.

Memories flow through John’s pebble-filled chest like water over river stones.

Less than and more than two years. 

He blinks away a tear that springs up.

Then: notices.

The lights are on.

He blinks again.

The lights are on.

Impossible. The man who lives there is a ghost.

The lights are on.

No. Simple enough. Mrs Hudson is scrubbing away two years of dust. That’s all. That has to be all.

John’s phone chimes in his pocket so he digs it out. 

His vision blurs. He blinks.

**** **_Are you coming up? SH_ **

 

The words suck the air out of his lungs. He drops the phone and runs.

 

 


	2. it's strange what desire can make foolish people do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “D’you want another?” she asks, not waiting before shaking out the rest of the bottle into his hand.

He stares at its shape: perfectly round against the awkwardly curved lines of his scrunched-in palm.

Blue and docile.

“D’you want another?” she asks, not waiting before shaking out the rest of the bottle into his hand.

Thick-hot blood behind his eyes. His throat tight.

“Just to help you sleep. Or…” She twists the cap, spins the plastic tight over the empty shell and tosses it in her bin. Half her hair’s fallen out of her lopsided ponytail. “To help,” she admits.

John jerks. She’s talking to him. “Yeah, fine.” _Grateful. Try. “_ Thanks,” he mumbles to his sister.

Harry yanks open the cupboard door behind his head. The lights are off in the kitchen but a thin slice of moonlight pierces the seam of the curtain strung haphazardly across the window, providing enough of a glow for John to make out the lines of her face. He has no idea what time it is. After—he’d walked, for a while. “Water?” She reaches up for an empty wine glass. It’s one of those posh ones with the stem cut off, expensive and stylish, an object you’re supposed to admire, linger over, cup between your fingers soft and tender like a baby bird, or a bare breast, or the broken skull of your never-lover—

“John.”

He’s gone blank again.

“You sure I shouldn’t take you to A&E, you’re fucking scaring me.”

He blinks. His vision refuses to clear, a damn kaleidoscope twinned with an ocean-wave roar between his ears. The world spins and he’s caught wild by the shock, by the distinct flail of a hope he’d buried. He blinks. His head aches.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

He stares at her, then at the pixellated bouquet of blue in the palm of his hand.

“You’re not fine because I’ve just pulled a wine glass out of my own cupboard and you’ve said nothing.”

He nods, somehow, in lieu of replying.

“ _John_.”

“Christ, Harry, I know.” He pinches a singular pill out of the mess and lifts it to his lips. Waits.

She squints at him, deciding. “They’re old,” she says flatly as she turns around, pushes on the tap with the back of the hand that’s holding the glass over the basin. Lets the water run cold. “Haven’t had a need to refill the prescrip—ah never mind. Couldn’t wait,” she finishes over her shoulder, sees that he’s swallowed it dry. She sets the glass down next to her elbow and crosses her arms over her stomach. “What’s going on. Really.”

“Told you,” he fights his rotten cotton-dry throat to get the words out.

“What.”

“Just.” Forces it clear. “A bit shaken is all.”

“Report it to the police then.”

A lightning-burst shot of panic, regret, _want_ through the sewn-together mess of his chest. Police. Lestrade. _Him_. He fists the pills into his pocket and empties his hand, stretches out his fingers. Even in the dark he can see on his palm little blue dots stuck to sweat. He smears them away against his jeans, forces air into his lungs. Out. In. This is normal. Breathing is normal. [ _Breathing is boring_ —(STOP)]. Out. In. Out.

“Those little moped fucks are getting worse,” Harry continues, “Got Dev’s outside a pub in Clerkenwell last week. Two tossers on a bike come out of bleeding nowhere, and same as you, poof—right out of his hands. Police haven’t recovered it yet—” she glances at him, measuring, “—but there’s a case open. It could help.”

John nods again. Swallows spit down his sandpaper throat. He can’t remember if he’d vomited.

_Sherlock is dead. It didn’t happen. He didn’t text you. He’s dead. You watched him die._

Harry, oblivious, purses her lips, blandly suspicious in the way only an estranged sibling can manage. “Didn’t think _this_ would get you, what with…everything.” She stops. She knows that he knows what else she could say and doesn’t. She changes tactics. “I haven’t heard from you in months and out of nowhere you turn up at my door in the wee hours looking wrecked.”

John concedes the point.

“Suppose this is to do with something else?”

“No.” Finally he has a ready answer. “No, I’m just. I thought.” He laughs, feeling delirious. The edge of the cliff, there: but he can’t. He can’t. “Nothing, I dunno what I thought. Sorry. I’ll just, thank you for the.” He shakes sense into his pulse and forces his lungs open. _Breathe_. Sets his shoulders. “You know. So."

“Don’t mention it,” Harry quirks an eyebrow. “Anyway, the glasses are Kurt’s. Samira’s mate." The names mean nothing to him. "I’m seven months sober on Saturday.” She won’t tell him how proud she feels, though its plain on her face. Her features turn soft when she's tired. “You want a cab, or, the sofa’s unoccupied.”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Sofa?”

“Thanks.”

Harry eyes him again, careful. It had been months, it had, and after it all, after he’d gone half mad panicking and denying, all he’d thought of was her, of wanting a piece of himself reflected back, real and solid. He’d rung her buzzer and thought he’d been fine. Thought of what he thought was close enough to an excuse.

He follows her wordlessly out into the sitting room and watches as she pulls a blanket from somewhere. She plops it at the edge of the sofa, points. “That cushion will have to do for a pillow,” Harry sighs. “Don’t say _fine_ again, if you say fine again I’m going to lose it.”

John nods.

“‘Night, then.” She leaves, not understanding, and climbs the steps to her bedroom.

He barely manages a moment alone before he gasps for air. Sinks to the floor. Drives his forehead into the cheap carpet and squeezes his eyes closed.

_It’s not real—he’s dead—you saw him die—you watched him die. He’s dead. He’s been dead for years. He’s dead._

An afterthought in the empty room, his mouth pressed damp and tight to the rug, he sobs.

 

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

John takes to running after this.

Every day for the next two months he runs before he goes to work, and runs after. Hours a day he runs, alone, along the Thames or along the route he used to walk before he started to run, and he thinks about what happened and tells himself over and over it didn’t.

 

Simple.

He was.

 

Overtired.

Delusional.

Stupid.

Desperate.

 

He comes up with reasons it didn’t happen and thinks he ought to forget about it.

He can’t. He tells Sherlock’s ghost on the nights that are particularly bad, the drawn-out nights that force him awake. Of course he can’t forget. He’d _seen_ it there, the text, the words lit up like stars in a black fog.

Anger grows in him from a seed. Soon it seeps from the scabs he’d thought had turned golden, curdles into something frothy and pungent. He lashes out at colleagues at the clinic, at Harry over text, at Ella, bless her weary soul, at strangers on the tube, but he doesn’t regret it long enough to remember. He’s angry at himself for going to Harry’s that night. For ever believing it at all. For being weak and stupid. For wanting. He’s angry at Sherlock, for deciding that being without was better than being with. The colour of the kaleidoscope shifts.

Finally he decides it was someone fucking about, having him on for a laugh. It was Mycroft, sod the fucking twat-faced fuck. Lestrade, maybe. An error from the mobile company. Service on Baker Street is bullshite and everyone knows it.

 _Tell me I was wrong_ , he says to Sherlock’s ghost. _Tell me I was wrong._

Sherlock’s ghost, insufferable bastard, is silent.  _Give up_ , his absence says.

 _It wouldn’t have worked,_ John starts to think instead. _We would’ve eaten each other alive._

He tries again to find the bedrock he’d thought he’d landed on, but it’s slipped beneath him unawares. Perpetual dips and dives and he fails, over and over and over and over, the glistening surface of packed-away grief still unattainable, still whisper thin, still a gossamer thread to a life _he could have had_ , and that’s the worst part of all.

John doesn’t drink. He runs for two hours a day with a newfound and clearheaded ferocity and channels his rage into a stone lost, then two.

He’s fitter than he was in Afghanistan.

He’s not well.

He never goes back to look for his phone. Sanity is well worth the price of another one. It’s not like it’ll ever happen again.

 

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

 

John locks the door, goes to his desk and carefully types c-o-g-n-i-t-i-v-e—d-i-s-s-o-n-a-n-c-e into his computer. He's between patients at work.

Sealed and safe in his mausoleum, he clicks on the wiki link. After a few minutes the words swim. Psychobabble, Harry would say. A fable seems to the make the most sense, somehow.

 

_The fox who longed for grapes, beholds with pain_

_The tempting clusters were too high to gain;_

_Grieved in his heart he forced a careless smile,_

_And cried, ‘They’re sharp and hardly worth my while.’_

 

John chokes on the nothing in his throat, the excuses, the words he never said.

 

 _Any fool can despise what he cannot get_.

 

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

 

The man’s laugh is jarring, a strange bark that explodes from the mid-point of his chest. “And he was under the impression it was 20k a month! The bastard.” He laughs again, and John echoes the laugh, mindless. “20k for a blocked river view. Can you imagine?!”

John wants.

 _God,_ the want that he wants.

Not for him to be him, but for him to be Him.

That’s all he wants.

_I want._

_I want to go home._

The thought comes suddenly, tugs at the base of his skull. Everything is boring now, every night he sleeps alone in the same bed in the same position in a strange flat on a strange street as a strange person. When had the unfamiliar become familiar?

The smell of the flat.

Sherlock’s violin.

The way it was between them. Never…

_I want to go home._

He shoves the thought away.

“Right,” John laughs again, fake and wide. It doesn’t matter at this point. “Right.” They’re two drinks in at trendy bar in Shoreditch that John has never been to before and will never have cause to go back to. The kind where Sherlock would have demolished the hipster staff in a river of insults. The kind that serves up a glass of flat Prosecco for more than a tenner. The man places his hand over the top of John’s hand, which rests on his thigh.

 _This is happening unless I stop it or he leaves,_ John thinks.

“Can you believe…’course I told him straight away he was off his head and now he’s going in on something in Battersea. He’d thought of Covent Garden! Can you imagine!? _Covent Garden_!?” Exaggerated, as if he’d recommended the greasy bottom of a skip. He licks at his too-white teeth and grins like a maniac.

“God, no, Covent Garden. Christ.” John doesn’t give a toss. An era ago, he’d never have found himself in this situation. An era before that: undoubtedly.

Somehow, after all this time, nobody knows.

London’s perfect for anonymous rendezvous and it’s easy enough to navigate a website. John likes women, and men, and frankly that’s no one’s business. He’s not ashamed, or embarrassed. It’s not wrong, that’s not…He’s private. He’s decided the rest doesn’t warrant too close of an examination.

Brain-dead pop music blares from the speakers above the bar.

The man isn’t all that bad. He’s charming, moderately intelligent, natty dresser. John doesn’t care. The man may or may not have near-black curly hair and green eyes. Tall. John doesn’t care. The man used to work in security services, something in private contracting, something or something or something or other. John doesn’t care.

“So what’s your deal,” the man asks, all cheekbones and wet lips. He’s at least 10 years younger than John. His jeans taper at the ankle.

“My deal.” John stalls with a sip off his pint.

“Yeah. You’re divorced, is that right?” A quizzical look, then, “…or what was it, that your—”

“Ah, doesn’t matter anymore. I’m single.”

“Ooh. Mysterious,” the man grins again. “I like a mystery man.”

“Mystery man…” John repeats. He’s sure he’s smiling. _God_. _I do too_ , he wants to scream.

“S’alright,” the man soothes. “You don’t have to say.”

And just like that, he’s forced, again—

“It was ages ago. My—ex,” John tries out the word, stumbles, clears his throat, “died a few years back and, yeah it’s fine. I’m not looking for anything, you know, more. Permanent. Just…” he shrugs.

“Oh, I know _exactly_ what you mean,” the man reassures him. Squeezes over the top of his hand.

_Do you? You know what it’s like to watch—to lose—_

_Leave it._

[And what is the truth? Can he admit the truth: they had never touched, _beyond_.]

It’s pouring down rain, like every cloud over London herself has squat square over this sad-arse bar, and John has half a mind to pat the man on his thick footballer’s thigh, stand up, and walk the fuck out of there, but.

But.

A little temporary human connection. What’s wrong with a little—

Then the world slides 90 degrees sideways.

“John?”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where I give my usual thanks for some wiki page or other. See cognitive dissonance and The Fox and the Grapes. Also Harry gave John diazepam, aka valium.
> 
> I've never written a closeted/somewhat sexually conflicted John before. With this story we're going to meet him where he's at.
> 
> And lastly, thank you for giving this another try. My brain got stuck for a while.


End file.
